March 2015

(Personal) Kanban Myths: The Myth of The Important Task

Continuing in my efforts to chronicle myths of kanban utilization, I thought I would tackle the second biggest misconception I see surrounding kanban boards.  As I discussed in my previous post, many people mistake kanban to be a process for task management, when in reality, it’s a visualization of some other process.  The key takeaway is that you should spend some time making your board match your process; a kanban board should emulate your workflow, not the other way around.

So you’ve invested the time, and you now have a complex board that accurately reflects how you do work.  You’re humming along, getting things done.  Life is good, right?

Almost.  If you’re just using a kanban board to visualize a process, there’s a temptation to accept the following:

Myth 2: Kanban is a visualization tool primarily focused on (important) task management.

This is partially true; in industrial kanban, workers may use a kanban board to keep track of individual issues as they move throughout the workflow.  Managers, however, should primarily use the tool to look for opportunities to continuously improve their processes.  Once your kanban board matches your process, it becomes easy to understand where bottlenecks occur (both resource allocation and/or unnecessary processes).   Tuning workflow is a critical part of kanban utilization.

For personal kanban, however, managing resource allocation becomes a bit of challenge; how do you manage yourself?  You’re already too busy working through your pile of stuff.  Unless you can recruit other friends or family members (the Tom Sawyer approach), it’s unlikely you’ll be able to adjust resource allocation.  You can, however, begin to look for opportunities to tune processes.  How?

This is where the conversation has to drift away from kanban a bit; as a tool, a board allows you to visualize workflow and primarily focus on improvement, but in and of itself the measure of improvement isn’t part of the board.  In other words, you can see how things work, but there’s no built in visualization for determining if something has room to improve.  You have to decide what that method of improvement will be.  To improve your processes, you must define the metrics for improvements.  Those metrics are known more commonly as goals.

Goals are a critical component of a successful kanban implementation.  For example, if you have a personal goal of “I want to lose 50 pounds in the next year”, that goal should influence your decision on which tasks to pursue (and what the priority of those tasks are).  In other words, if your kanban board shows that you’re getting a lot done, but no tasks are associated with the goal of losing weight, you’ve got some room to improve your processes.

So, in summary:

  1. Spend some time making your board match your processes (at least 30 days).
  2. Define your goals (metrics for improvements)
  3. Take some time to tweak your processes to align them with your goals.

Minor incremental adjustments are more likely to be adopted than sudden and swift changes (see my management notes about change curve).  Kanban is a long-term tool, but can be highly effective at improving workflow.

 

(Personal) Kanban Myths: The Myth of The Process

Recently, my friend Joe Webb has posted some great resources on Personal Kanban on his Facebook timeline.  Joe’s an influential guy in the tech community (particularly the #SQLFamily), so I’ve been excited about the flurry of emails and comments regarding the adoption of Kanban techniques.  I’ve been using Kanban boards for a while now at work, and it’s interesting to see the differences between Personal Kanban and “industrial” Kanban.   The significant distinction between the two appears to be the impetus to “get things done” in Personal Kanban by using a very simple abstraction; in other words, start with a simple board of “To Do”, “Doing”, and “Done” and attack your task list.

I think this is a great way to get started with Kanban, but I also think that it’s easy to forget about some critical components of Lean thinking.  After observing a couple of email chains from friends (and comments on Joe’s Facebook thread), I thought I’d blog about some common misconceptions of Kanban, starting with:

Myth 1: Kanban is a process to manage my task list.

This is probably the biggest trap that most people fall into when they decide to get started.  The simplicity of Kanban is so appealing; just throw up a board and start moving cards left to right.  Getting things done; Kanban helps you do that, right?

Sort of.  Kanban is not a process; it’s a visualization of your process.  The distinction may appear to be subtle, but it’s important.  A simple board showing three columns (i.e., “To Do”, “Doing”, and “Done) assumes that your method of handling tasks is equally simple.  Your process should drive your board, not the other way around.  While the act of defining tasks will yield some immediate benefits, oversimplifying the visualization has some costs.

As a concrete example, let’s assume that one of your tasks is to call and make an appointment with your doctor.  You move the card to the Doing pile, call your doctor, and then get informed that they’ll have to call you back.  Can you move the card to Done?  You haven’t made the appointment.  Do you leave the card in Doing?  Are you doing anything with it besides waiting?  Do you move it back to To Do?  You’ve already started working.   If your board is driving your process, the temptation is to leave the board alone and struggle with task movement.  If your process is driving your board, you change the board.  Add a column for waiting tasks, move the card, and then revisit that pile as needed.

Don’t get me wrong; starting with a simple board is a GREAT way to get started with the fundamentals of visualizing workflow, especially if you don’t know what your process is yet.  However, as you discover more about the way you work, don’t try to change the process (at first); make sure that you spend some time developing your board so that it matches the way you do work.  Improvement will come later.